i don't smoke
by dress without sleeves
Summary: Wendell Bray, on the lab, the squints, and the FBI. 'Cause I love him, and he's cute. And he plays hockey with Booth. And one time got put in Juvie for a weekend, which I didn't even know was possible. Did I say he was cute?


**Author's Notes:** Wendell is my favorite. They MUST hire him. He fits in the best with the team, and I love the changes he gives to the dynamic—and the way that he fits in so well with both Booth AND the squints.

Plus, "Fire in the Ice", anyone? "We're Booth's people"? Unashamed girl SQUEE.

i don't smoke

So, yeah, okay, Wendell is willing to admit that he's read Dr. Brennan's books. He figured, he's gonna be working for her, he might as well try to get to know her first so he can have an idea of what sort of impression to make, besides a good one. He's seen all her interviews and read all of her articles—although, admittedly, he understood about four of them—and he thought he had a basic idea of what this lady was going to be like.

And he was right. More or less.

What he wasn't prepared for was everyone _else._ The Jeffersonian is like no lab that he has _ever_ been in, with all the dating and the breaking-and-entering and the admitted-killers working as _science teachers_. He likes Max, really, he does, but isn't there something unethical about letting a man who openly admits to having committed a crime he wasn't convicted for work with kids?

Whatever. Wendell guesses they could do worse. Max works wonders with mentos and a diet coke.

He _definitely_ wasn't prepared for Angela, because _hi_, smoking hot lesbian/"don't-label-me" artist who openly talks about sex and thinks that he is "wow, Wendell, wow"? She makes him this impossible combination of worried and impressed and Wendell isn't one to let anyone throw him off his game. He's actually relieved that Hodgins has this sort of weird unspoken claim over her within the lab, because it sort of takes the edge off her and all her dangly bracelets. They annoy him on everyone else but sort of work, on her.

And then there's Cam, and, ummm, it hardly seems fair that he's interning at the _one_ science lab in the universe that's _not _filled with those girls that always got picked on at school. Because really. If he were like, two days older he'd be on Camille Saroyan like butter on bread. A sexy, sassy cop-turned-scientist from Brooklyn who could wipe the floor with half his high school football team? What's _not_ to like? She's got the balls of the girls from home and the class of the girls that lived uptown and hi, welcome to a grad student's wet dream, Dr. Saroyan, how may I service you?

Let's top this little duo off with Hodgins, _the_ most angry dude Wendell had ever met, that first day, and seriously, what intern _isn't_ going to be overwhelmed? To be fair, the bug guy has cooled a bit, sometimes makes jokes, occasionally invites him to do experiments, _once_ invited him out for a beer after work, but the truth is Hodgins is missing Zack and Wendell's not an idiot. He knows he's no replacement.

That's the hardest part, maybe, about this job, is that everything he does is compared to Zack, even if only subconsciously, and no matter how much he works to make them like him he's never gonna be as good or as loved as that guy was.

Except maybe by Booth, who after five minutes on his first day pulled him aside and said, "Oh thank God, a human being arrives in the Jeffersonian," and clapped him on the shoulder, three times. They'd talked about growing up in places like Philly and Pittsburg and three days later Booth invited him to join his hockey team. He's not ashamed to admit that he practically swelled with pride when the FBI agent had introduced him to the team.

"This kid's no squint," he'd said with obvious pride, catching the back of Wendell's neck.

Booth reminds him of his older brother, except that Booth isn't a huge drunk fuck up, and he likes him. Likes him enough to say with annoyance, "We're _Booth's_ people," when that Perrota woman (and, again, are there any _unattractive_ women in this business?!) tries to claim them.

But Hodgins says it too, at the same time, and for _one second_ Wendell feels like—like one of them. And it feels for a second like he's back home, in his neighborhood, and Mr. and Mrs. Gordon from next door are holding a cookie jar full of checks in their hand and saying—"Go on, boy, you go make us proud."

The squints at the Jeffersonian are a family, and that's scarier than any colleague could ever be. Wendell hadn't realized what he was walking into, what sort of relationships he would have to form in order to stay.

More than that—he hadn't realized how badly he would want to.


End file.
